I am used to seeing my USian LJFriends bemoaning $4 / gallon petrol prices and had not bought petrol myself for a while but was surprised to find that petrol is MUCH more expensive over this side of the pond! We are spending up to £1.40 per LITRE! Now, using very rough approximations, there are about $2 per £1 and four litres to a gallon. I know, very rough. Please do let me know if these rough conversions are wildly off. Anyway, using these rough conversions, we are paying £1.40 x 4 x 2 = more than $10 per gallon!!!

ETA: TBH our living and traveling needs are not relevant to the price we are charged for petrol. My reason for this post was not to whine that we are charged more but merely to state the fact that, for whatever reason, we are - whether we have further to drive than you guys or less far to drive.

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My point was that our government heavily subsidizes American oil/gas companies. This keeps our costs artificially low compared to countries that don't let the companies off so easily. Our gov't also puts very little into the public transit infrastructure. Part of the reason is that the US is so vast, with population centers scattered.

When prices start rising, folks here tend to complain mightily, in part because that's what people do and in part because we often have no choice but to drive great distances. Also, because we've had low prices for so long, people have set down roots in areas where they could live comfortably while working elsewhere. Or, they live where there were historically jobs, but those jobs have now disappeared.

I listed the distances simply to give perspective. The US is vast. Folks who live overseas often don't realize just how big it is.

bring back Amtrack, eh... I couldn't find a train route from Orlando to San Diego and when we travelled on up to SF we never even though to look into the train, despite our ambition to take the train from San Diego to Seattle one day. If I wanted to go the same distances in Europe, I have access to a pretty good train network; you can do Berlin/Brussels/London overnight and that's over 900km (although less than 600km as a great circle, so the flights are far faster, assuming they didn't close Heathrow while you were trying to get home).